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Much like the buffalo, the windmill has all but disappeared from the American landscape.

And there used to be millions according to Coy Harris, executive director of the American Wind Power Center and Museum in Lubbock, Texas.

“It wasn’t the six-shooter that won the west,” Harris said, “it was the windmill.”

Without these engineering marvels, railroads, ranches and farms would not have had an adequate water supply, Harris said. “Easily, every farm had to have one. It was the only way to get water.”

In its heyday, Harris said, “there were 30 companies each making 100,000 windmills a year.”

Daniel Halladay patented the first windmill in 1854. The ones we most commonly see in rural areas were designed by Thomas Perry and made by the Aermotor Windmill Company, the only company still manufacturing windmills today.

“Aermotor was one of the most popular windmills made, starting in 1888,” said Robert Schultheis of the Missouri Extension Center. “Windmills were popular from about 1870 to 1930 as a way of pumping water from shallow wells.” They are still used by the Amish in this area, Schultheis said.

Rural electricity, which expanded greatly after World War II, was the demise of the windmill. “It was easier to flip a switch than maintain a windmill,” Harris said.

Harris estimates the number countrywide has now dwindled to roughly 200,000.

It is unlikely they will make a comeback. But I hope that, just like the buffalo have been kept from extinction, they are preserved.